Written by Gary Isbell If there is a place where the ideas of the book Return to Order might resonate, it would be Miami. This is because author John Horvat’s description of an organic Christian society emphasizes the ties of family, community and Faith that are still very strong in this city of many cultures. … Read more
Occasionally there appear books that by their great insight and scholarship come to define the terms of the debate surrounding great controversies. The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, (New York: The Penguin Press HC, 2014), is not one of these books. Free Book: … Read more
When talking about local productions, many people only think in terms of place. Many think “local” only refers to where production happens. However, “local” also involves relationships—in this case, local relationships. Over time people develope relationships with nearby producers so that these products became part of the local culture. All this changed with … Read more
It is no secret that most American cities lack the dynamism and life that they once had. Cities used to be places where people lived, worked, met and spent their leisure together. Today, with the exception of a few cities like New York City, downtowns are largely vacant and lifeless. Roger Scuton, commenting … Read more
Among news commentators throughout the West, there is the constant complaint that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Numerous books and articles are quick to criticize the present economic system as the cause of these ills. They claim capital tends to concentrate indefinitely and propose a tax-the-rich solution as the … Read more
It is interesting to note the different perceptions of how people perceive what they do for a living. Finance professor Bernard Lietaer makes the distinction by noting the original meanings of the words ‘job’ and ‘work.’ He writes: The word ‘Job’ is recent; it dates from the Industrial Revolution. It was initially defined as a … Read more
Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has authored several books including Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and America’s Future, and most recently Tea Party Catholic. Dr. Gregg took some time out … Read more
American law’s attachment to higher law dates back before independence as can be seen in this reference from renowned English jurist Sir William Blackstone: “This law of nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all … Read more
Our ability to know things beyond the local and the small leads us to affirm that there can also be proportion in bigness. We must, of course, reject monstrous proportions. Yet it cannot be denied that nature does give us as examples huge mountains, great plains, or immense oceans that convey the idea of a … Read more
“The philosopher George Santayana once observed that Americans don’t solve problems, they leave them behind. If there’s an idea they don’t like, they don’t bother refuting it, they simply talk about something else, and the original idea dies from inattention. If a situation bothers them, they leave it in the past” (David Brooks, On Paradise … Read more
